UPS’s New Contract With Teamsters Removes Strike Threat

April 26 (Bloomberg) -- United Parcel Service Inc. and the
Teamsters union agreed to a new five-year contract covering
250,000 employees, erasing the risk that some business might be
lost through just the threat of a strike.

The accord includes “substantial” pay raises, higher
wages for new part-time employees and the creation of 2,000 more
full-time jobs from the ranks of part-timers, the union said
yesterday. The agreement will go to a ratification vote among
rank-and-file drivers, package sorters and clerks before taking
effect on Aug. 1.

Reaching the accord before the existing contract expires in
July offers reassurance to shippers who may have begun shifting
deliveries to FedEx Corp. or other competitors ahead of a
possible walkout at the world’s largest package-delivery
company. A two-week Teamsters strike in 1997 cut Atlanta-based
UPS’s volumes as much as 6 percent and cost about $650 million.

The contract “removes an overhang on UPS shares,” Justin
Yagerman, an analyst at Deutsche Bank in New York, wrote today
in a note to clients.

UPS management probably included the higher wages in its
full-year earnings forecast of $4.80 to $5.06 a share, which the
company reaffirmed yesterday when it reported first-quarter
results, said Yagerman, who recommends buying the stock.

UPS climbed 0.3 percent to $85.71 today in New York
trading. The shares previously gained 16 percent this year,
compared with 11 percent for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.

Medical Costs

The contract preserves health-care benefits and boosts
pension contributions, making it a win for UPS Teamsters “at a
time when workers and their pay, benefits and working conditions
are under attack by corporate America,” Teamsters General
President Jim Hoffa said in a statement.

Union employees sought higher pay, more full-time jobs, an
increase in part-timers’ starting salaries and no co-pays on
health-care premiums, according to the Teamsters for a
Democratic Union, a splinter group of Teamsters workers.

UPS management wanted the union to share part of the burden
of rising medical costs and had a goal of completing a contract
by the end of March to avoid losing business, Scott Group and Ed
Wolfe, analysts at Wolfe Trahan & Co. in New York, wrote in a
March 22 note. Wolfe Trahan rates UPS as peer perform.

“These agreements are a ‘win-win-win’ for our people,
customers and shareholders,” UPS Chief Executive Officer Scott
Davis said in a statement. “The fact that we have reached
agreements well before our current contracts expire is a
testament to the skills and determination of all those involved
in these negotiations.”

Talks began last year, and Davis said yesterday on an
earnings conference call with analysts that he was optimistic a
deal would be made “very soon.” UPS’s last tentative agreement
with the Teamsters was reached 10 months before the previous
contract expired.